But I’m a step closer to the real thing now, thanks to this machine!

This is my beloved PAL VC-20, the uncommon version of the Commodore VIC-20 released in Germany. It came to me in a sorry state from a seller in the UK, but I was able to get it working again with some TLC, light soldering, and a replacement keyboard from an “Aldi” Commodore 64. I originally thought the beige keys against the egg-white case of the VC-20 would look a bit weird, but it grew on me the more I used it. Keen-eyed Commodore fans may have noticed I put the original VIC-20 orange function keys on there as well.

But this was only meant to be temporary, because I eventually hoped to pair it with something else: an original VIC-20 PET-style keyboard. The first Commodore VIC-20 machines shipped in 1980 with keycaps, springs, and a PCB it shared with the later PET machines. Eventually, Commodore’s factories were retooled to make the familiar keyboards and keycaps later seen on the VIC-20, C64, and C16 (there’s also a “Eurostile” keyboard popular with people like Adrian Black, which is also quite beautiful).

☕︎ ☕︎ ☕︎

After a few years of saved auction site searches, I finally scored a hit in Europe, and had it sent over to our floating continent in the middle of nowhere. I was tempted to put this into one of my Commodore 64s, but it really does deserve a home in the VC-20. And here it is:

Everything about this keyboard is stunning. The flat, uniform, glossy keycaps. The wide, achingly beautiful late 1970s font that wouldn’t look out of place in a Kirk-era Star Trek film. I can’t stop staring at it:

Most of all, the tactile, springy feeling is so completely different to any other Commodore (or indeed, any other computer) keyboard I’ve ever used. That is, except for that PET keyboard I used with my grandad in the early 1990s. Striking these keys again brought back more memories than I expected, and admittedly choked me up a bit.

This keyboard is fascinating, and even has a few hidden surprises I wasn’t expecting. I’ll save a technical deep dive on this board for a future post. I just wanted to share some initial photos and joy, because I never thought I’d be typing on something like this ever again. I miss you, grandad.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-02.

Anyway. The case and the disc were in near mint condition, on account of having barely been watched. So I took some photos, wrapped it up, and listed it for $10 on eBay, about half of what I spent. It sold within a day, and I shipped it to the winner in WA.

A few days later, I got a message from the buyer claiming I’d “scammed” them. They claimed the disc wasn’t in good condition as I’d claimed on the listing, but that it was so badly damaged their player couldn’t even read it. I replied with confusion, and shared a photo of the disc I’d taken before it was shipped. They replied with their own photo of a disc that looked as though it’d been through a wood chipper.

The chat has since been deleted to the sands of time, but I wish I kept a copy to share here. The photo was very clearly not the DVD I’d sent them, on account of the damaged label clearly showing “CD-R”. The underside also had that telltale recordable media shade of blue, rather than what you’d expect from a pre-recorded DVD. I didn’t know what was worse: the fact they thought they could scam me, or the utter lack of effort they deemed necessary to pull the wool over my eyes.

Just thinking of the exchange now makes me laugh. Thesedays I’d reply saying I wasn’t convinced by their fake photos, and that I’d be escalating to eBay support if they continued their stunt. Experience has taught me that most scammers scamper like roaches as soon as someone pushes back, because they figure their time is better spent on easy marks. I did the same thing recently with a scammer selling an Apple IIɢꜱ.

Alas, at the time, they got the better of me. I was socially awkward and shy enough that I didn’t want to engage. I needed that $10, but it also seemed like an affordable price to get these people out of my life as quickly as possible. I issued them a refund, and moved on with my life. I then noticed that, of course, the scammer was selling my exact DVD for $15.

Oh well, you live and learn.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-02.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

37:37 – A feedback episode, reading comments about the show from Adam, Alistair, and Abdullah. Discussing my favourite personal shows that are still going (Into Your Head, The Overnightscape Underground), task management (Getting Things Done™, the spark to get something started), 1980s British retrocomputers (Spectrums, Amstrads, Orics, and Acorns), coffee (my own snobbery, instant coffee, how supermarkets sell it), and what constitutes a mathematics coprocessor! Recorded late September 2026.

Recorded in Sydney, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Released October 2026 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts; this one notwithstanding. Hosted graciously by the Internet Archive.

Subscribe with iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast or add this feed to your podcast client.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-01.

Recently I’ve been getting email and DMs from a few people asking if I can help them or their clients “fix” Wikipedia articles. These invariably involve scrubbing references to contentious topics, actions, and/or positions. It’s telling how nobody ever pings me asking for someone’s good deeds to be added.

I want to be crystal clear here: I do not accept such requests. I do not remove text with valid citations. I do not remove references you don’t like. And I do not edit Wikipedia for compensation, financial or otherwise.

I’m not an admin, but I’m an extended confirmed user, pending change reviewer, and have autopatrol rights. These were earned from years of edits made in good faith to advance the cause of the project I care about. I refuse to jeopardise that trust placed in me, or compromise the integrity of the site.

If you or your client are concerned about bad things being listed, maybe work towards doing good things instead that can be cited after. Everyone loves a redemption arc.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-01.

It reminded me of when I got my first Sun Ray box at uni in the 2000s, and how I thought it was even smaller in person than I expected. Or thinking the Queen Mary was even bigger than I expected when Clara and I went to Long Beach. I guess size is one of those attributes I need to see to believe, or even relate to.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-09-30.

• Being fitted for a suit and/or helmet
• Surgery
• Rock climbing
• Rock descending
• Eating sixty-four slices of almost anything
• Applying cosplay make-up
• Flipping a LaserDisc
• Sneezing

This is now on the Pieces of 8 page.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-09-29.

Yesterday we were honoured to be at the Gunner’s Barracks in Sydney again for another, this time between Linh and my brother-in-law Victor. A bit of rain threatened to wash away the initial ceremony, but everyone laughed and the bride and groom took it in their stride. It’s also a good luck omen, so I can only assume they planned this in advance.

Linh and Victor are among the kindest, most considerate people I’ve ever met, with a soft spoken but cheeky streak that shone throughout the proceedings. I couldn’t be happier or more proud.

In the space of a year, my little family tree has been extended to include Cantonese and Vietnamese. This is an honour, though I’ll admit the pressure is now on to learn more than 唔該 and cảm ơn (cough). I’ll add them to the pile with Japanese (cough). I really should get this cough checked out.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-09-28.

If only someone made a case with a similar internal design and footprint to the MicroServer that… oh, wait a minute. What’s this handsome thing? I mean, aside from the reader who’s looking at this post?

This is the InWin IW-MS04, which I’ve also seen sold as the InWin Mini 4 Bay. It’s another cute server box which largely reproduces the same layout as the HP, right down to the four drive sleds, Mini-ITX motherboard tray, a half-height PCIe slot, slim optical drive bay, and 120 mm fan grill.

It also includes a dust cover in the door, something the HP lacked:

You wouldn’t want anything but a more basic CPU given the space constraints for a cooler, but a power-efficient CPU for running a file server and related services would be perfect.

Now I just wish I could afford RAM ^^;.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-09-28.

But there’s a caveat here. NetBSD’s ZFS only includes support for a subset of the features that OpenZFS on FreeBSD provides. Therefore, if this pool is intended to be used with NetBSD, the FreeBSD zpool should be created with only the features NetBSD supports.

According to NetBSD’s zpool-features(7) manpage, the following zpool features are supported:

• async_destroy
• bookmarks
• enabled_txg
• embedded_data
• empty_bpobj
• extensible_dataset
• filesystem_limits
• hole_birth
• large_blocks
• lz4_compress
• multi_vdev_crash_dump
• sha512
• skein
• spacemap_histogram

I assumed this coincided with the feature list imported from illumos in 2020, and a look at the list in the following file on FreeBSD confirms this:

/usr/share/zfs/compatibility.d/2020

So to build a NetBSD-friendly pool on FreeBSD, we use:

• -d, which disables all zpool features
• -o compatibility=2020, which only enables these features

For example, this would be:

# zpool create -d -o compatibility=2020 ${NAME} ${VOLUMES}

Essential reading

• zpool-create(8) for FreeBSD

• zpool-features(7) on FreeBSD and NetBSD

• zpool(8) on NetBSD

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-09-26.

Update: An earlier version of this post referred to Nicaragua being in South America, which I know wasn’t true. I literally was looking at a map on their wall as I wrote it. What next, am I going to say Chile is next to Canada? Or that Costa Rica is an island near Vermont!? Estúpido

With thanks to Jean A. and Adrian for reminding me.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-09-25.